A brief note for the record

Recently, Republican presidential candidate Donald J. Trump reorganized his campaign, bringing Breitbart boss Steve Bannon on board and ushering veteran operative Paul Manafort to the door. This was seen as an attempt to right Trump’s sinking poll numbers in advance of the November general election. Bannon has a reputation as a maverick in the ordinarily staid Washington political scene, and is seen by many as a tough-as-nails brawler with a keen sense of what people on the right want to see. He also has something of a dim view of the opposition of some Catholics to Donald Trump.

“I understand why Catholics want as many Hispanics in this country as possible, because the church is dying in this country, right? If it was not for the Hispanics,” Bannon told Robert P. George, a Princeton law professor who, along with dozens of other leaders, wrote an open letter to fellow Catholics denouncing Trump.

“I get that, right? But I think that is the subtext of part of the letter, and I think that is the subtext of a lot of the political direction of this.”